Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 09:41:24 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender: eliz AT is
To: Dave Bird <dave AT xemu DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: DJGPPFAQ.HTML, usability problems.
In-Reply-To: <sRbJRLAGPGy2Ew0R@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.990216094047.14991E-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com


On Mon, 15 Feb 1999, Dave Bird wrote:

>  By the time I hit "if you are in a hurry" (I was) I hit a
>  very buggy bit.

Thanks for your comments.  I will save them and try to correct them
when I release the next version of the FAQ.  However, I'm afraid that
I cannot do much about most of what you write, since I cannot work
around every bug in every browser out there.  I test the FAQ with
several versions of several browsers available to me, but I cannot
test them all, and I cannot track the bugs the new releases introduce
every month in their constant race to put out newer and buggier
versions.

>  The link to "Table of Contents" is actually to "Top" -- way
>  above the table of contents.

I use Texinfo to generate the FAQ in all formats.  Until now, Texinfo
didn't support links to something that isn't a node, and most Web
browsers aren't smart enough to find the string that is part of the
link text, like Info does, and instead land you at the beginning of
the node, which is useless in many cases.

The next version of Texinfo will support links to anchors that I can
put anywhere, so I will be able to handle this issue more
intelligently.

>  Additionally, the HTML source
>  uses enormously wide lines which is OK if it 100% works and
>  users never need to view source, but....

...but what?  Why is the appearence of the HTML source important?  The
FAQ source explicitly says at the beginning NOT to look at it, as it
is ugly.

The are good technical reason for this ugliness which I won't go
into.  If you are intersted, download the FAQ sources (faq211s.zip)
and look at the process the HTML output is generated.

>  The links to "Program Index" and "Topic Index" are funny.
>  They don't work in Netscape4; I don't think it likes spaces
>  in names.

Netscape 3 doesn't have any problems with the indices.  I suggest to
downgrade.

(The problems with spaces in link names is very hard to solve with
present tools; the next version of Texinfo will solve this for me.)

>  In Internet Exploder they work but Back doesn't
>  work with local names, it goes "back" to the top of the file;

I cannot reproduce this problem in IE.  What version did you use?